Win or bust as season set to end for Ulster or Munster

It's 'win or go home’ time for Ulster and Munster.

The sides meet this evening for the third time this season, in a United Rugby Championship quarter-final play-off in the Kingspan Stadium (7.35pm).

And while the bus journey to Limerick takes longer than the short spin home to various Belfast suburbs, a defeat for the hosts would make for an unpleasant trip.

With Leinster long established as the pick of the bunch in Ireland, this game will go a long way towards giving the victors the reasonable claim of 'best of the rest'.

"When we go back and look at the games we’ve played against Munster, they are a very difficult opponent," said Ulster head coach Dan McFarland this week.

"Teams never win by much when they beat them and we certainly don’t.

"I think we’ve had one game in the last four years that we’ve been comfortable in and outside of that it’s tooth and nail stuff, the margins are fine.

"They are the team we’ve struggled against most this year and we’ve played against some pretty good teams."

Ulster are without a trophy since 2006 and Munster’s last success came in 2011, both teams picking up an older iteration of the URC.

This season, Toulouse did for both in Europe, claiming a one-point aggregate win over Ulster and then drawing with Munster before winning a shoot-out in Dublin.

This evening’s hosts finished on 59 points, three ahead of Johann van Graan’s men, with 12 wins and six losses to their name. That was enough to get the home slot but it's an away semi-final, in Cape Town or Edinburgh, for the winners.

To illustrate the mixed form of the Ulstermen, two of their victories came against Leinster, while they fell to home and away defeats to Munster, the 24-17 reverse in April making it three losses in a row against Van